Browns off, but still close gap in AFC North race

If the Browns win at Cincinnati on Sunday, they will be a half game behind the Bengals atop the AFC North race. The division standings in the wake of Baltimore’s overtime win over Cincinnati: Bengals 6-4, Browns 4-5, Ravens 4-5, Steelers 3-6. The Browns are a game out in the race for the second wild card spot.

Meanwhile, the team emerges from the bye week having stabilized with 31-year-old Jason Campbell at quarterback, and re-energized in an actual playoff race.

“We’re 4-5, and we’re on the upswing,” left tackle Joe Thomas said. “We’re playing better as a team. The offense is playing better. The defense is playing better. And we’re in the hunt.”

If the Browns win at Cincinnati on Sunday, they will be a half game behind the Bengals atop the AFC North race. The division standings in the wake of Baltimore’s overtime win over Cincinnati: Bengals 6-4, Browns 4-5, Ravens 4-5, Steelers 3-6. The Browns are a game out in the race for the second wild card spot.

Their ability to hang in the AFC North and wild-card races is tied to Campbell, of course, and head coach Rob Chudzinski, obviously.

“I’ve been impressed with coach Chudzinski,” Campbell says. “He’s not going to shy away from any circumstances. His attitude and mindset really sit well with our young football team.

“The more I play with these guys, the more I get used to them.”

Browns fans aren’t used to coming out of bye weeks with genuine hope.

Chudzinski’s predecessor, Pat Shurmur, showed signs of getting his regime’s act together coming out of last year’s bye, almost beating the Cowboys at Dallas the first week, then taking down the Steelers, Raiders and Chiefs in succession.

Trouble was, the record was 2-7 going into the bye. The final record was 5-11, with Brandon Weeden starting all but one game.

Shurmur’s first year, 2011, brought an early bye, at which point the Browns were 2-2 behind Colt McCoy. They went 2-10 after the break.

In 2010, head coach Eric Mangini served up the best “bye sandwich” of the expansion era. Going into the bye, the Browns went “attack style” in a win at New Orleans. Coming out of the bye, they dominated New England 34-14.

Unfortunately, they were 1-5 before the Saints game and 2-6 after the Patriots game.

Mangini’s first season, 2009, got hit by bye-week hurricane. A 31-3 home loss to Green Bay set off owner Randy Lerner, who sat down for a long interview with two fans, one of whom (“Dawg Pound Mike”) was organizing a fan boycott.

Page 2 of 2 - In the last game before the bye, Derek Anderson was benched in favor of Brady Quinn in a 30-6 loss at Chicago. General manager George Kokinis then got fired, and Lerner launched the search for a fearless leader that led to Mike Holmgren. Coming out of the bye, the Browns lost 16-0 at Baltimore. Eventually, the team was 1-11 before the least satisfying four-game win streak in team history.

In 2008, head coach Romeo Crennel served up one of those temporarily satisfying bye sandwiches. He went into the bye with a win at Cincinnati and after the break delivered a 35-14 win over the defending Super Bowl champion Giants on a Monday night.

Left tackle Joe Thomas rates that Giants game and last Sunday’s win over Baltimore as the biggest Browns wins since the start of the 2008 season.

“We beat the Giants early in the season,” Thomas says. “We played so well. We felt we could have a good season.”

It was an early bye. The Browns were 2-3 after the Giants game. Then they went to Washington and lost 14-11 to a team quarterbacked by one Jason Campbell. Anderson was losing his grip on the quarterback job and would be replaced two weeks later by Quinn.

The last season that amounted to anything after a bye week was 2007. Crennel served up another tasty bye sandwich, going into the break with a 41-31 home win over Miami to lift Browns to 3-3. He came out of the bye with a 27-20 win at St. Louis.

The Browns went 7-3 after the bye. The one game they couldn’t afford to lose came two days before Christmas, at Cincinnati.

A win would have clinched a playoff berth. A 19-14 loss became toxic, even though they beat the 49ers a week later to finish 10-6.

Flash forward to 2013. Chudzinski, who was the offensive coordinator in 2007, gets his post-bye trip to Cincinnati out of the way early. A win puts the Browns at 5-5.

The players are thinking division race first.

“We play Cincinnati again, and we still have the Steelers twice,” cornerback Buster Skrine said. “Yeah, we’ve got a good chance of going to the playoffs now.”

Coming off a win over Baltimore, with a rare chance to get to .500 this late in a season, every Browns fan on the planet has a taste for one of those nice bye sandwiches.